Author Archives: Carrie

Waldorf Perfect Re-visited

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I wrote a post awhile back about this whole notion of  Waldorf guilt,  and the dangers and impracticality of striving for perfection here :  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/05/16/waldorf-perfect/

 

I find this is the time of year we need to  re-visit this topic.  Curriculum fairs are popping up all over,  and mothers are starting to look toward planning for fall again whilst trying to finish up this school year.

 

I want to reiterate here that homeschooling is about family.  It is about love, warmth, laughter and joy, and spending time together.  If you find that your homeschool rhythm, or the things you are trying to learn or do with your homeschooling are consistently draining to you in your quest to be “Waldorf Perfect”, warning signs should be going off.

 

Waldorf Perfect is a perfect recipe for burn-out and for leaving Waldorf homeschooling altogether. 

 

Yes, Waldorf homeschooling is about inner development balanced with doing.  I see a lot of imbalance out there – mothers who are doing, doing, doing, doing and then that turns to drudgery, or mothers who are involved with inner work but no doing, or mothers who are just researching and not putting anything into action.

 

Please know that just as every class teacher has different strengths and weaknesses, so does each and every individual homeschool.  We have to try and learn and expand in the areas where we are not strong, but I also don’t think we should abandon the things that make us feel joyous and nourished.  I love to draw, paint, model, and make needle felted creations.  I don’t love to knit; I do it when I need to in order to work alongside my daughters, but I don’t spend a lot of my free time on it.  I like to try to garden, but my garden has its share of successes and failures.  I love movement and being outside, and I love movement games with music.  My homeschool reflects me, my joys, my strengths. Your homeschool will look different. 

 

There is no perfect recipe for Waldorf homeschooling; but there are essential truths of childhood development to work with.  Goodness, Beauty and Truth.  Head, Hearts and Hands.  Willing, Feeling and Thinking.  There are skills to be worked with and learned.  Most of all, there is an opportunity to know yourself, to know and observe your child and know what special things you can bring to your child to help them, guide them and teach them. 

 

But there must be warmth, laughter, love and enjoyment.  We are not creating a Waldorf school in our homes but our own family life with a homeschooling experience.  Your religion, your culture, all of that should be reflected within your homeschool.

 

Don’t try to be perfect.  Try to love.  Try to learn.  Try to strive and do better each and every day.  Be faithful in the small things. 

 

Have fun exploring each new seven year cycle and knowing that in respecting the child’s development, you will know what will come in when. 

 

In Joy,

Carrie

First Grade Wet On Wet Painting For Saint David’s Day

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Today is one of my favorite feast days:  The Feast of St. David of Wales!  There are many wonderful stories about Saint David.  I decided today to use an element from one of the many stories about St. David to bring wet on wet watercolor painting to our first grade daughter.

There seems to be a lot of confusion and mystery regarding wet on wet painting for those families new to Waldorf.  Watercolor painting, in and of itself, has been around for quite some time – think of brush painting from Asia, and the watercolors of the German Renaissance Master Albrecht Durer.   Waldorf Education has a beautiful of approaching watercolor painting for children in the kindergarten and the grades.

In first grade, we go through each color one at time by itself  (which is very beautiful and reverent….I mean, in this day of visual bombardment how often do we get to experience the pure beauty and joy of one color?), then two colors and then some first grade teachers will move into three colors.  Eric Fairman , Master Waldorf grades teacher, discusses the approach he took in his first grade Path of Discovery guide if you are looking for more information.  If you are looking for other resources to help you discover wet on wet painting, please do have a look at this back post:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/02/02/resources-for-wet-on-wet-watercolor-painting/

So, today I had heavy watercolor paper soaking in a tray of water whilst I told some brief stories about St. David, including how he went into Wales to spread the message of the Gospel, how the monastery he founded was very simple where the monks pulled the ploughs for sowing the fields, how he and his monks ate no meat, and how St. David was called the “waterman” not only because he would only drink water but because he would often pray submerged up to his neck in cold water in those Welsh lakes.  I also talked about the miracle of the ground lifting him up so people could hear his message.

Then, to lead up to our painting, we ended with the story of  the battle between the Welsh and the invading Saxons. Legend has it that the Welsh were losing until St. David pointed out that the dress of the two sides was so similar they could not be told apart in battle. He suggested each of the Welsh put a leek in their hat or dress, and the Welsh went on to win the battle.  When a Welsh leek flowers, it looks like a daffodil, so we worked together to create the beautiful colors of the daffodil in our painting.

First we painted our whole page yellow.

(There was once a beautiful daffodil standing as bright as the sun itself.  The daffodil was so lovely that everything in God’s creation wanted to be close to this sunny, lovely daffodil.)

Even the sky moved closer in to see the daffodil, but dared not to get too close to touch the daffodil.  The sky did not want to mar the daffodil’s radiant springtime beauty!

(Paint blue creeping in at the edges, round and round on the page, circling in, until a patch of yellow daffodil is still present).

And all the sky, and all the meadow, rejoiced in the daffodil’s beautiful light.

(If you look carefully at this painting, you can see the darker blue on the outer border, green like meadow as the blue and yellow mixed, with a yellow center as a daffodil).

The main thing to wet on wet painting is to just get the supplies and paint! Paint yourself first and then bring it to your children!  They will thank you!

If you need more help, here are two free resources I suggest:

http://thewonderofchildhood.com/2011/06/wet-on-wet-watercolor-painting-set-up-2/  (multiple parts)

and this resource by Sarah Baldwin, with multiple parts:

Many blessings and joy!

Carrie

Chapter Two: The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work

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Chapter Two is entitled, “How I Predict Divorce.”  Based upon observing couples in his lab, Dr. Gottman lists the following difficulties couples face in communication, and especially in how they handle disagreements:

 

1.  “The Harsh Start-Up”.  His theory is that if a discussion starts off with criticism or sarcasm, that the conversation should be tabled until a different time.  Start over.  Harsh start-ups can be a predicting sign of other negative ways to interact as a couple.

 

2.  Criticism:  “You will always have some complaints about the person you live with.  But there’s a world of difference between a complaint and a criticism.  A complaint only addresses the specific action at which your spouse failed.  A criticism is more global – it adds on some negative words about your mate’s character or personality.”  “A complaint focuses on specific behavior but a criticism ups the ante by throwing in blame and general character assassination.”

 

3.  Contempt: Sarcasm, cynicism, name-calling, eye-rolling, sneering, mockery, and hostile humor all fall under this category.  These behaviors make a problem impossible to solve.    Contempt attacks character.  It demeans.  It conveys negativity.  Belligerence, which is anger that contains a threat or provocation, also falls under this category.

 

4. Defensiveness:  Research shows that defensiveness rarely makes a partner back down or apologize.  Defensiveness is a way of blaming your partner, and it tends to escalate the  conflict at hand. 

 

5.  Stonewalling:  Harsh startups, criticism and contempt and defensiveness all lead to  an essential tuning out of one partner.  In order to avoid a fight, the person just turns away.  Many times this is a protection mechanism because that person feels attacked and flooded by negativity.  Here is a sobering quote from this section of the chapter:  “The more often you feel flooded by your spouse’s criticism or contempt, the more hypervigilant you are for cues that your spouse is about to “blow” again.  All you can think about it protecting yourself from the turbulence your spouse’s onslaught causes.  And the way to do that is to disengage emotionally from the relationship.” 

 

6.  Body Language/Physiological Response to Negative Flooding – Men actually are more physiologically reactive to stress than females (see the book for more details why), so they are more likely to be the stonewaller in a marriage and shut down.  Men generally also seem to think in terms of righteousness and are indignant after an argument, or they consider themselves the innocent victim of their wife’s anger or complaint. 

 

Dr.  Gottman says that women normally bring up the sensitive issues in a marriage and the men, not as able to cope with these issues, avoid the subject or become belligerent or contemptuous in order to silence her.  However,  he contends that even if your marriage follows the patterns mentioned above, it is not a given that divorce is likely.  “In fact,”  Dr. Gottman writes on page 39, “you’ll find examples of all four horseman and even occasional flooding in stable marriages.”  (The four horseman are what I listed under numbers three through six).

 

7.  Failed Repair Attempts – the failure of repair attempts during disagreements are the strongest predictor of divorce.  In marriages where there is mainly criticism, contempt, defensiveness, it is likely repair attempts will fail. 

 

8.  Bad Memories – Happy couples tend to look back on their courtship, marriage and early married days with fondness.  They may even glorify the struggles they have gone through.  Unhappy couples tend to re-write the past with a negative slant.  

 

Dr. Gottman notes that when a couple at the end stage of marriage comes for counseling, they often are not fighting because they have so withdrawn from the whole situation.  They are distanced and emotionally disengaged.  He remarks that some people leave marriage by divorcing, or some remain married and just lead “parallel lives together.”  He also talks about an affair being a symptom of a dying marriage, not the cause of a dying marriage.  But, he also talks about how it is not over until it’s over and how he is convinced many marriages could be saved with the principles in this book of how couples interact when they are not disagreeing.

 

I say, lead on Dr. Gottman. I can’t wait to read more!

Many blessings,

Carrie

Meaningful Work For Adults: A Discipline Challenge

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I believe the key difficulty lies in that adults of this time and place try to relate to small children through words and through the perception that the small child should be treated the same as an adult- provide logical explanations, more explanation, more talking, more experiences – in order to make discipline go well.   The fact that the child then does something that was never done to them (“Why is my child hitting me and biting me?  We don’t do that to them!” or disappointment when “She could have cared less that she was being wild and disrupting the baby’s nap.  Why can’t she have consideration for the new baby?”)

Disappointing indeed, to discover all those parenting books were wrong, and to discover the completely different consciousness of the child.

The child of birth through seven should be living in their bodies, and we should be able to hold discipline through rhythm, through using song along with movement, through silence and loving authority as we  keep calm and carry on.  Less words, more warmth, more work on our parts.

In order to help our children, we have to become agents of doing.  This is what a small child relates to.  When we don’t show our children any meaningful work within a meaningful consistent rhythm, they are rightfully confused. Continue reading →

Day One, Part One: Twenty Days Toward Being A More Mindful Mother

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Creating a family life can be daunting:  such a huge responsibility, and this wavering between too many resources and not enough as we try to work with the things no one seems to talk about.  From all my work with parents, sometimes I can feel the emotions mothers experience  drawn in space almost like the four  temperaments.   Perhaps there is the dark side of isolation and sadness like the melancholic,  the fiery choleric need for order and doing (and maybe anger and frustration as things don’t line up to our plans and expectations), the deep phlegmatic ponderings in nature and spirituality, and the sanguine joy and fun of play and creating beauty.

However, all of these emotions also have a polarity.  Isolation and sadness can give way toward helping others and ennobling them through our own dark experiences; the need for order through domination can also become leadership and delegation and setting priorities, the ponderings can give way to action, the fun and joy of creating can give way to stillness to  just see and observe.

The pieces I see missing from mothers  is this scattered sense of too much information and too much time gathering information and not enough doing.  The practical piece, that willing and doing, just has to be there.  I don’t know about you, but I am tired at night from the sheer doing of it all.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into Day Number One: Inner Work.

Please have a notebook and a piece of paper and ponder the following: Continue reading →

New Beginnings

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Lenten tidings to you all, dear readers!

Lent is this sobering, quieting time of new beginnings.  It becomes the time and space for confession and for asking forgiveness, both in public and in private.  It becomes the time of setting forth priorities and laying forth new inroads of habits.  A time of using less resources, both of food and of our planet’s energy.  A time of new prayer and much reading.  And a time of doing.

I think many people do not associate Lent with doing.  But I do.  The website Full Homely Divinity says, “The Celtic saints who laid the foundations for our Anglican traditions were an extreme lot.  One might say that their practice of the faith was homely in the extreme.  They lived in harsh times and seemed to exult in taking on harsh challenges, physically and spiritually.  Thus, they challenge us in the softer times in which we live and in the softer ways in which we choose to live as Christians.” You can see the full article here, including a summary of the wonderful Lenten book about St. Kevin and the blackbird here:  http://fullhomelydivinity.org/articles/full%20homely%20lent.htm

Now is the time – what are your priorities for your family? Are you willing to step out and live that?  What is your place and your mark to make to help your community?  Are you doing it?

And your parenting:  it is not enough to just read blogs or books and toddle on the way you always have.  Now is the time to do.  Be present with your children by taking an electronic fast.  Play with your children.  Do real work in front of them.  Show them how to live!

In the spirit of Lent, I offer you several links that are my favorite for this season:

Carbonfast for Lent:  http://carbonfast.blogspot.com/

Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan: http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html

A Lenten Calendar for children:   http://thesefortydays.blogspot.com/2008/02/project-lenten-calendar.html

We will also be coming back to the oldie but goodie series  “Twenty Days Toward Being A More Mindful Mother” with updated versions of these classic posts that will also include a strong component of real, practical work – the doing piece that is the balance to inner work.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Chapter One: The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work

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Today we kick off our new book study:  “The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work” by John Gottman and Nan Silver.  This book was a New York Times bestseller, and has some interesting observations as to our most intimate relationships.  You can find the link to it on Amazon here:  http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Principles-Making-Marriage-Work/dp/0609805797/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329658637&sr=8-1

Dr. Gottman  spear-headed sixteen years of marriage and divorce research at University of Washington in Seattle and ended up being able to predict, with 91 percent accuracy, over three separate studies, whether a couple would stay married or end up in divorce.  He got to the point where he could predict this after listening to a couple interact in his Love Lab for as little as five minutes! Continue reading →

For The Little Ones

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I am still seeing and hearing a lot of confusion out there regarding homeschooling and parenting with tenets of Waldorf Education for the little ones under the age of seven.

 

It has been said many times, many places that for small children under the age of seven, these are the Kindergarten years and life is the curriculum. 

 

That is true, but in Waldorf Education within the home we take these tenets of education and work with these essential truths in these ways:

 

1.  Rhythm is strength for the parent.  It is also the discipline and the balance for life with small children.  Your rhythm is based upon what you are doing each day.  With small children, this is honoring play, rest, sleep, meaningful work in nurturing the home, diapering/toileting and mealtimes. 

 

2.  Outside time is the balance of work and daily nurturing care.  It is the genesis of play as well as the best place to develop the lower four of the twelve senses that is the total neural foundation for learning.

 

3.  Small children need fewer words, more singing and humming and movement as you help them do what needs to be done according to rhythm.

 

4.  Nursery rhymes, and small stories are the nourishment of the soul.

 

5.  Reverence is the attitude that fosters gratitude in small children.  Life must slow down so you can model and show gratitude as you take care of your home, your pets and each other.

 

6.  Media is not a question of never in the future, but really doesn’t have a place in the life of the small child.

 

7.  The Kindergarten aged child is about weaving in and out of your work with child- sized pieces for them to assist you with and enjoy.  The Kindergarten is not a project-driven, you must complete this small child, kind of thing.  The process IS the product.

 

8. Your child is learning all the time.  Formal academics come in with Main Lesson blocks in the first grade when your child is close to seven.  There is no form drawing, music lessons, etc in these early years.

 

9.  Warmth, love and laughter is the medium in which all of this bakes.  Love your children, love your life, enjoy your family.

 

10.  Your personal inner development must be balanced with development of the practical skills of nurturing, those ordinary domestic arts.  Spirituality and religion is an important part of family life.

 

11.  Community.  Just meditate on that: how we show community to the small child, how do we show we help others, where is that balance of taking care of our own families and helping others?

 

Hope that spurs some thought and discussion in your home.

Many blessings, In Joy,

Carrie

Intimate Relationships: Eight Facets Of A Healthy Family Culture

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We are at the last of the eight facets of a healthy family culture!  Writing about the impact that the state of intimate relationships in a household can be a tricky proposition for many reasons, and one I hesitated writing about until the end.

First of all, I don’t want those in families led by a single adult to feel not included or to feel that a single family household is somehow sub-par. I also know from over the years that different marriages and partnerships have different feels to them, and how different couples define “a good marriage” seems to vary,  but somehow they work, so giving “advice” about this seems to be difficult at best.

However, what I have seen over the years is that when the intimate relationships within the household are not working well or are strained, it affects family culture, it can really affect the children, and so I did want to mention this as part of the foundation of healthy family life.

Many sources say it is actually not conflict that diminishes marriages, but rather lack of kindness, lack of patience and tolerance and a general lack of sense of love or being loved.

John M. Gottman, in the book “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”, asserts that happy marriages are based upon Continue reading →

Discipline: Eight Facets Of A Healthy Family Culture

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Discipline is our seventh facet of a healthy family culture.  Discipline, to me, boils down to nothing less than how you guide your child or children toward becoming a mature and healthy adult. Discipline requires authenticity, yes, but also a steadiness and platform of patience and evenness, and an understanding of children’s development and the best tools to use when.  The tools of discipline, to me, differ based on the developmental stage of the child.

 

 Being An Authentic Leader – This is one of the very first posts I ever wrote on this blog:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/10/16/gentle-discipline-as-authentic-leadership/

 

The first ingredient is of course, you.  Your views, your steadiness, and yes, your family culture obviously influence things.  And no, I don’t think you need to be this completely calm mother who walks around like she in a valium-induced haze.  I know loads of mothers who have incredible energy!  I do think, though, that there has to be a steadiness of not being completely overwhelmed and frustrated.  And that, to be honest, can be really difficult when children are very small.  And teenagers also take a lot of energy!

 

The qualities I think about most in my own mothering were the ones I described in the series “20 Days Toward More Mindful Mothering”.  Some of my long-term readers might remember that series.  Cultivating these qualities is what inner work and personal development is all about.  You can see those posts here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/category/general-wisdom/20-days-toward-more-mindful-mothering/

 

How Do You View Children and Childhood?  Much of this boils down to what you think about children. Do you think they are miniature adults with less experience just waiting to be filled up with knowledge?  Do you think the consciousness of the child and the rationality of the child is the same as the adult?  Many times we would point to teenagers, and laugh, and say, oh no of course a teenager is not as rational as an adult, but yet we parent them by talking them to death and expecting them to come to the same conclusions that a forty-three year old adult would in the same situation.  They might, but they might not!  Smile

 

I often think of the ages of birth through seven being a time of doing, the time of age seven through age fourteen of being the time of strong feelings, and the time of age fourteen through age twenty-one being when rational thought is being developed.  To me, childhood ends around the age of twenty-one.

 

If we concur that development does take time, that children of different ages actually are different in the way that they think and respond to things, then we can look at tools and expectations based upon development.

 

However, the one thing that remains steady through all of these ages is CONNECTION and ATTACHMENT.  You cannot parent without this.  Please do go back and read the posts that summarize the wonderful book “Hold On To Your Kids:  Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers”.  Connection is the number one way to discipline a child. 

 

Discipline Tools – So, for me, the methods and tools of discipline looks a bit different dependent upon the child’s age.  I have written many, many, many posts on this.

 

In a brief nutshell, for  the ages birth to seven, your discipline techniques really involves slowing down.  Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, and slowing down really sets the tone for what happens. Small children should be involved in meaningful work, and plenty of  indoor and outdoor play.   Physically moving with your child into what needs to be done whilst you are singing and helping them is most helpful.  Children of this age imitate what you are doing, so making sure you are doing something worthy of imitation is very important.  Words and talking the child to death is the least important part of this picture. 

 

For children ages seven to fourteen, this is a time to be a loving authority in your child’s life because there will be many instances of your child discovering what the boundaries of your home life truly are, and they are searching to see  if you yourself walk the walk of what you are telling your child.  Criticism of the parent seems to start in our times around ages nine or ten, not in the same way that a teenager criticizes, but children of this age certainly do notice if you tell them one thing and then do another!  Calm, sure, steady and warm are hallmarks in discipline of this age.

 

For children fourteen to twenty-one, the parent is moving into more of an age of being the expert guide on life’s issues and the child is of course taking increasing responsibility.  Here is an interesting blog post from over at Christopherus regarding parenting teenagers and talking specifically about dealing with friends:  http://christopherushomeschool.typepad.com/blog/2005/07/keeping_one_ste.html

 

Many blessings,

Carrie